None of them are great for your level by the time you can make them. Plus they're prohibitively expensive for the very minor edge they may provide.

However, Animate Objects + Permanency gives you most of the benefits at a fraction of the cost. If you use blood money the permanency is even free.

Getting a animate objects on your list is difficult, but the Animated Staff works too.

On top of this, Animated Objects tend to be better than most other constructs. They're customizable, and flexable in their design. Get a statue, and there is a reasonable argument to even allow it to wield a weapon.

I have had my characters make constructs before. Usually however by the time you can make them, they are more for the awesome factor than actually useful in game.
My favorite was a wizard that crafted iron cobras and stone golems form awesome statues he found throughout the campaigns later stages.

So you're level 8, that means you're likely fighting creatures with average ACs ranging from 17 to 27 (CR 4 to CR 12). You want at least a decent chance of your minion hitting something with AC 27, or even hit AC 30 on something other than a natural 20.

So let's say you're targeting for a +12 to hit, since you plan to upgrade it or trade up before AC 30 is the bare minimum of what you'll be fighting.

You want something Medium-sized or smaller, I take it, due to your statement about having issues with Large-sized minions entering areas.

The Waxwork template allows you to pick and choose from already extant monsters to find a bruiser that works for you.

Offhand the cheapest Medium-sized construct I can think of is a Waxwork Young Ogre (possibly with Advanced and of the more useful ogre subrace/mutations), which would have a +7 to-hit by default(+9 if Advanced). However, you can make a version of it that has up to 6 HD, out of the box simply by increasing the cost you're willing to spend during creation, which would raise its to-hit to +9(+11 if Advanced). Thanks to Building and Modifying Constructs rules, you could then boost the construct to have up to 9 HD, which would also allow you to increase the Strength Score by 1 at 8 HD, for a baseline of +13 to hit(+15 if Advanced).

Given the way Waxwork Creatures work, this would be for a total of 4500 gp, and at that point the only way to further scale its attack over time would be with magical enhancement or a Masterwork weapon, which should be cheap enough on top of that, unless you decided to opt for one of the ogre-variants that has natural weapons. So that brings us up to either +14(+16 adv) with a MW weapon that gets 2 attacks from BAB or 2-3 natural weapons at +13(+15 adv)

As for Ogre variants to use, Thicken would lower its AC by 1 in exchange for a bite attack, and Shaggra would give two natural weapons while also increasing to-hit and damage by +2, which is always nice.

Combining Shaggra, Advanced, and Young together you'd have a Str 26 Dex 16 Medium-sized minion that has Greatclub and Simple Weapon proficiencies and can hit AC 30 enemies either on a 12 and then a 17 with iteratives or has two chances to hit with natural attacks on a 13 each time. Thicken with that would give 14 Dex instead and 3 chances to hit with natural attacks on a 13 each time. And basically auto-hit any small fry enemies.

It can only be destroyed if enemies use fire on it, too, although that is one of the more common energy types, so that is a concern, and the best defense you can give it is fairly expensive and caps at Fire Resistance 30 or just casting Resist Energy on it every so often.

That's with the most unimaginative humanoid-shaped monster I could pull out of my hat, too. There's likely a more cost-efficient way to get a nice to-hit bonus on a minion.

A Young Advanced Two-Headed Troll would get you the same basic Strength and to-hit bonus, but with 4 natural attacks by default and 9 HD is its baseline, so you could make it with up to 13 HD just going off of the base creature and pump that up to 19 total HD with modifications, so it'd have a bit more scaleability if you were prepared to make more of an upfront investment.

Soulbound Mannequins aren't terrible. They have 10 HD, decent HP (they effectively have the equivalent to a level 10 Fighter with 16 Constitution), a decent +15 to-hit with two natural attacks, and you can increase their HD to 15 HD through construct modification.

They have Intelligence scores, which can be very handy. Depending upon how your GM rules retraining to work or making them in the first place, you can also get them to have a decent enough bonus in a number of skills. If you increase their HD to 12 you even add another skill they can max out. IIRC it's 800 gp per additional HD in terms of crafting cost.

Since they are constructs, you can also easily implant Ioun Stones in them if you make them or acquire them. That can add several proficiencies to them that they would otherwise be hard pressed to get without spending feats.

Speaking of which, they get feats, and can get up to 8 feats, with full BAB and decent strength, so they should be able to handle basically the feat cost for any particular melee or ranged fighting style. They can also take Master Craftsman, Craft Wondrous Item/Craft Magical Arms and Armor, and Cooperative Crafting if you want to pay for the ability to churn out such things faster.

The various SLAs come in handy, too.

Depending upon how long your GM requires them to be dead for in order to capture enough soul essence to make such a construct, you can either try Breath of Life or Temporary Resurrection + Breath of Life or a Paladin with Ultimate Mercy to avoid having to pay (as much) resurrection costs for volunteers or you can look into offering assisted suicide services, capturing enemies to execute them later, or getting a contract to execute prisoners from the local government or the like.

They can also be perfectly loyal, intelligent minions to run businesses or manage keeps in the absence of the party, and it takes higher level magic to suborn them than a humanoid of relatively low level/HD.

Their only shortcoming ultimately is that they lack a source of fast-healing or a property that makes permanently destroying them difficult. Memory of Function is still about 2500 gp cheaper than building a new max HD Soulbound Mannequin, I suppose. Hmm. Too bad Trompe L'oeil is almost certainly out, as Tompe L'oeil of a soulbound mannequin would take care of the permanent destruction weakness and take care of equipping it with weapons and armor.

That and their HP not scaling well with increased HD. There may at least be some way between magic items and feats to give them fast healing, though if you make the Soulbound Mannequin to be a Clockwork Construct, then a Clockwork Servant can provide endless out of combat healing to them, all in exchange for costing 1.5 times as much as usual. Which still isn't terrible, but it's not great, either.

Other than Soulbound Mannequins...

Terra Cotta Soldiers are decentish, Medium-sized, and have Intelligence Scores! They do cost more than Soulbound Mannequins and have fewer HD and a lower maximum HD cap(12 HD instead of 15 HD), but don't require jumping through hoops to get a person's soul residue.

They're also as dumb as a box of rocks until you've spent money increasing their intelligence score, but they qualify for feats and 1 skill point per HD.

Tupilaqs are Small-sized but have a decent bite/claw/claw routine and had 3/day SLAs of the creator's choice, which is always nice.

They're very vulnerable to Erase, though, and you have to have complete privacy and secrecy to make one.

Aballonian - Good all-rounder with high HD and HD cap for its size, but would require special GM permission to make.

Animated Object (Small, Medium) - Weak for your level

Angelic Guardian - Decent HD, can scale up to 9 HD. Flgith, decent number of natural attacks, breath weapon, decent stats. Probably one of the stronger contenders given a cap of Medium for size.

Blood Golem - very good HD and HD cap for its size, especially compared to the other golems. OKish stats, Strength could use some buffing through modification/items. Can heal by draining blood, so something can be rigged up there for healing them out of combat readily enough.

Bronze Sentinel - A bit weak, but it has a ranged touch attack and an Int score. Magic immunity to a certain extent.

Mask Golem - An intelligent golem, but has the same issue of low HD and a low HD cap before size increase as other Medium-sized golems. Has some interesting special abilities and can take on a Swarm form to fit into narrower confines even if you size it up, but it's only 1/day and for a short period of time.

Mirror Man - Fast Healing, Int score, Medium size, decent HD and HD cap for its size. Has weapon proficiencies. Decent stats. Requires killing a dude and probably isn't an option to learn how to make them in Golarion without some exceptional circumstances.

Necrophidius - low HD, rubbish physical combatant at your level.

Scarecrow - A bit weak and will be left behind in a level or two or three, even scaled up to the HD cap for it.

Soulbound Shell - A pet level 12 spellcaster, but requires a level 12+ spellcaster to die as part of making it. Expensive.

Tribal Totem - good HD and HD cap for its size, some interesting abilities. May have some issues making one.

Wax Golem - low max HD(without size increase to Large), chance of gaining sentience. If it gains sentience, requires GM adjudication as to whether you would retain control of it. All kinds of GM adjudication here involving the sentience, levels, and its potential for leveling up.

Wyrwood - advances by character level, would require GM special permission to make or learning the recipe from Wyrwood, and their backstory is that they gained free will and murdered their creators, so not exactly reliable.

If your GM is ok with homebrew and working with players, you could use the price by CR rules and come up with a construct of whatever CR you want to have, tweak the price by CR to whatever the two of you agree upon is appropriate, and then make that and have it look like or be flavored as whatever you all deem appropriate.

Building and Modifying Constructs covers it fairly well and even offers pointers on the subject, such as lower hp for the CR due to lacking Constitution Scores but high AC or DR or Hardness to compensate for that.

So a generic, CR 8 construct would cost 16,000 gp in order to craft it, and if it warranted additional material costs it would range anywhere from 17,600 to 19,200 gp, before any GM modification.

Average HP for a CR 8 monster would be 100 hp, but it's a Construct, so it'll be lower, so we target 80 hp, since that's nice and easy to think of, being 80% and all. Since we're ging with a Medium size construct, that means it has +20 bonus hp, which means our target is 60 hp from HD, and d10 HDs average 5.5 hit points, so it takes 11 of them to get 60.5 which rounds down to 60. So our generic construct would have 11 HD, which ultimately can be extended up to a cap of 16 HD over the course of its lifetime in the campaign.

From there the rest of the details would depend upon what kind of role you want it to have. Is it just going to punch things with brute strength, is it going to be a flank buddy to a rogue and need some nimbleness, is it mostly there to just absorb hits without directly contributing damage?

Doomed Hero wrote:

Homunculi and Rune Guardians are the only constructs worth their cost.

I understand Rune Guardians since they can have a whole mess of Unseen Servants at their command and accomplish a fairly ridiculous amount of work through that.

Why do you say that about Homunculi, though? They seem to have a fairly high price per additional HD, have a hard restriction preventing them from, say, keeping the master's study tidy while they're out adventuring, and how many additional HD can be added onto them is a big fat question mark in Pathfinder as far as I can tell.

Looking to the past, we can see that it was kinda hazy and possibly something like 6 HD going by D&D 3.5's monster Advancement rules, though admittedly those weren't absolutes just that going beyond them is rare, and it was kind of weird how it interacted with golem advancement and size increases.

Homunculi and Rune Guardians are the only constructs worth their cost.

But I don't cost much at all. :(

Doll are useless

Poppets aren't dolls. We're action figures!

still useless.

If you're wanting tanks, maybe. Poppers have lots of uses.

With the strength bump, carrying capacity bump, and fly option, those action figures can carry you over obstacles quite easily.

Start with a Tiny Poppet (310/160), and add to it the Agile poppet (200/100), Heavy Lifter (250/125), Mighty Poppet (400/200), and Soaring Poppet (800/400) qualities, for a poppet that can fly at 20' (poor) carrying up to 292.5# of stuff (or people) all for the low price/cost of 1960/985.

Spending two grand for an action figure that can carry you to the roof any time you want? Sure.

Still, though, a low level spell being able to permanently move it one step closer to permanently losing your expensive investment is very problematic, even if it has a three strikes you're out policy instead of a one strike policy like the lesser Tupilaq construct.

It's also 6 levels above what OP can make, so even if he's leveled up once or twice since making this thread, it's probably still a bit away from him.

Pricewise it's way too expensive, even if the GM allows waiving of the CL requirement for construct creation, going by WBL, he's not going to even have 75,000+ gp to spend until level 11.

Scarecrow - A bit weak and will be left behind in a level or two or three, even scaled up to the HD cap for it.

You don't make a Scarecrow for its HD or its attacks though, you put it together for its Gaze and Fear effects. DC 14 is rather easy to make by the time you can make it but some Debuffs can help with that. Makes for a good helper for Witch/Shaman for Evil Eye usage. Note should only make one if your going up against enemies that can be mentally effected.

And really for the Topic itself that's what you should look at constructs for. You can get any number of cannon fodder or bruisers from other sources, but constructs you have to look at them closer and think; "Why am I building this and what is its role?"

Final note: There's some Golem Manuels under Wonderous Items that can help in making them. Only about 5 are listed but I see no reason a DM can't homebrew others.

Scarecrow - A bit weak and will be left behind in a level or two or three, even scaled up to the HD cap for it.

You don't make a Scarecrow for its HD or its attacks though, you put it together for its Gaze and Fear effects. DC 14 is rather easy to make by the time you can make it but some Debuffs can help with that. Makes for a good helper for Witch/Shaman for Evil Eye usage. Note should only make one if your going up against enemies that can be mentally effected.

And really for the Topic itself that's what you should look at constructs for. You can get any number of cannon fodder or bruisers from other sources, but constructs you have to look at them closer and think; "Why am I building this and what is its role?"

Final note: There's some Golem Manuels under Wonderous Items that can help in making them. Only about 5 are listed but I see no reason a DM can't homebrew others.

If you've got a build where that can slot in, sure, it can be a useful supplement, and some synergies can build off of it making people cower, certainly.

Still, even if you increase the HD, it will be fairly fragile, and it needs to be in melee to make use of the fear effect rider on its natural attacks, so it's going to be bunched up and a target for AoEs.

I also feel that its ability to actually hit its foes is also a bit weak, so you'd have to invest even more in bringing it up to snuff to have a good to-hit.

Although I suppose once you commit to souping it up, you can deal with basically everything but the fragility, I believe, since it's not crazy expensive to buff up the Strength or give it a basic Amulet of Mighty Fists.

Without investing in Fire Resistance, though, the base Scarecrow will most likely fail any reflex save against a fireball and a CL 7 Fireball will, with average damage, completely kill its 47 hp. If you increase it to having 7 HD from the base of 5 HD, then it'd take a CL 9 Fireball to destroy the Scarecrow in one go.

CL 7+ Fireballs should be a relatively common hazard to a party of Level 8 PCs. You'd need to give it Fire Resistance 30 for it to expect to survive a CL 10 Fireball if it fails its save, which IIRC would need either a CL 11+ Resist Energy cast on it or ~33,000 gp spent to add the Greater Energy Resistance Magic Armor property onto it. Unless I'm getting when you factor in energy resistance and vulnerability into damage calculations.

I guess there may be a good way to beef up the Scarecrow's HP that I'm not aware of, though.

The only thing that occurs to me offhand on that front is making one intelligent and then making a Trompe L'oeil version of it and buffing Charisma or alternating between Alter Ego and Trompe L'oeil templates in order increase its HD up to the limit of the caster's ability to make the Spellcraft check in order to craft it or the size of their wallet.